"A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
From 'Adam's Curse', Yeats.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Small Thoughts About Giant Gifts, On Your Birthday
Dear Jamie:
Today is your fortieth birthday. I miss you, and I ache to be able to celebrate you in the spectacular fashion you would have deserved. But I have been struck this week by how much faith I have in your love for me and your other loved ones. What I mean is that somehow the knowledge of how much you loved us buoys me, and that feels like some great fortune. And I wonder about the future: what will happen to this sensation of feeling your love around me, so easy to reach right now? Is there some way to hold onto it, since you're gone, and that becomes more and more true each day? I know nothing about how to answer those questions.
But it's your birthday today, and I feel truly lucky to know that you loved me the way you did. So my birthday gift to you is to try not to waste an ounce of it: to love myself as deeply and as loyally as you loved me, and to try and share those qualities of love with the people in my life. My gift, too, is to keep on nurturing the creative spirit in me which you helped kindle and spark for almost 20 years. And finally, to do the best I can to bring out these giant gifts of living in my own loved ones. Happy Birthday, Jamie. And thank you.
Love,
Farnaz
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
On Teaching, Daily Life, Keeping On
After being away from normal routine this weekend—on a "writing retreat" that was silent, too—I am noticing that normal routine in some way feels easier than before the weekend. I don't know if that has to do with just getting distance from the way the everyday mundane things have a way of weighing me down, or if it's because my partner is gone and I still have all this space at home for another kind of 'retreat', or if there's something not quite as nameable that comes from even a little respite. On the other hand, it's just kind of horrifying how quickly the noise and business and distractions fill in space when I let it, and that's what happens—some of these so-called chores are just distraction, hubbub, and empty activity.
My students this fall have humbled me; most of the 20 people in the Kresge Core class that I'm teaching have arrived at UC against unbelievable odds—a handful are the first in their families to go to college, some are spending their weekends back home caring for family farms or disabled siblings, others only learned English when they were 8, 9, 10, and still feel sort of stuck between two universes. Today one young woman had been present and engaged during the whole class, asked me a good, clear question when we were finished at the end of class, gathered her things, and by the time I was out the door a few minutes later, she was on her phone on her balcony, crying almost uncontrollably to the person on the other end. I remember how it was to be that age. I remember and I don't always want to, although I still feel that I was lucky because of the friends -- some long lost, some still in my life -- I met at UCSC that helped me make sense of a world that had suddenly and radically gotten much, much bigger. Some days when I am not totally hoofing through a lesson or racing to catch up with my own assignments for my students, I know I strive to be that person to some of them.
*****
I found this little list poem this weekend which I wrote in June.
Things I Have Put My Faith In
Barack Obama
The genuine good of my colleagues
My sister's ability to take it one day at a time
(My sister's faith)
Friends' shoulders and embraces even when I feel I have nothing to offer in return
My cat's nine lives.
My lover's longevity (and his faithfulness)
His faith in me.
The soil around my home and its health, in the face of acute disease.
The green thumb I got from grandfathers I didn't know.
Four distinct seasons
(which need):
People in the U.S. committing to sacrifice for others, or the seasons are history
Poetry
My friends' commitments to bring creativity into this world.
Touch
My lover's hands, even when he's gone.
Friendship.
My students this fall have humbled me; most of the 20 people in the Kresge Core class that I'm teaching have arrived at UC against unbelievable odds—a handful are the first in their families to go to college, some are spending their weekends back home caring for family farms or disabled siblings, others only learned English when they were 8, 9, 10, and still feel sort of stuck between two universes. Today one young woman had been present and engaged during the whole class, asked me a good, clear question when we were finished at the end of class, gathered her things, and by the time I was out the door a few minutes later, she was on her phone on her balcony, crying almost uncontrollably to the person on the other end. I remember how it was to be that age. I remember and I don't always want to, although I still feel that I was lucky because of the friends -- some long lost, some still in my life -- I met at UCSC that helped me make sense of a world that had suddenly and radically gotten much, much bigger. Some days when I am not totally hoofing through a lesson or racing to catch up with my own assignments for my students, I know I strive to be that person to some of them.
*****
I found this little list poem this weekend which I wrote in June.
Things I Have Put My Faith In
Barack Obama
The genuine good of my colleagues
My sister's ability to take it one day at a time
(My sister's faith)
Friends' shoulders and embraces even when I feel I have nothing to offer in return
My cat's nine lives.
My lover's longevity (and his faithfulness)
His faith in me.
The soil around my home and its health, in the face of acute disease.
The green thumb I got from grandfathers I didn't know.
Four distinct seasons
(which need):
People in the U.S. committing to sacrifice for others, or the seasons are history
Poetry
My friends' commitments to bring creativity into this world.
Touch
My lover's hands, even when he's gone.
Friendship.
Monday, October 26, 2009
"My body knows things my brain has no idea about"
"My body knows things my brain has no idea about"
Title from a line by Heather McGowan in The Duchess of Nothing
(Note: I don't think of this as a "finished poem", but rather as riffing off the line mentioned above. But nor do I think only "finished" things should be shared--it's all about keeping the wheel turning).
My body knows things.
Like: how to pet the cats
What to do with the root-bound plant
And how hard to shake it
How the soup will taste and
Why it should taste that way—
I am like a Volkswagen-sized leatherback turtle,
Climbing out of the tide and up the beach where she was born,
Finding a spot in which to bury her eggs—
Hundreds of them, ping pong ball size—
Some of which will hatch babies that in turn
Will have to figure out where the ocean is
And how to make it there
Scuttling across sand in morning sun
Hoping to escape a predator's hand.
I am like the albatross, courting, clack clack clacking
In a dance of fidelity, catching the female's eyes
And convincing her to partake, to dance back,
Two coquettes, unending their mating ritual
For minutes upon minutes upon minutes,
Somehow knowing it needs to last
In order to mean something lifelong.
Title from a line by Heather McGowan in The Duchess of Nothing
(Note: I don't think of this as a "finished poem", but rather as riffing off the line mentioned above. But nor do I think only "finished" things should be shared--it's all about keeping the wheel turning).
My body knows things.
Like: how to pet the cats
What to do with the root-bound plant
And how hard to shake it
How the soup will taste and
Why it should taste that way—
I am like a Volkswagen-sized leatherback turtle,
Climbing out of the tide and up the beach where she was born,
Finding a spot in which to bury her eggs—
Hundreds of them, ping pong ball size—
Some of which will hatch babies that in turn
Will have to figure out where the ocean is
And how to make it there
Scuttling across sand in morning sun
Hoping to escape a predator's hand.
I am like the albatross, courting, clack clack clacking
In a dance of fidelity, catching the female's eyes
And convincing her to partake, to dance back,
Two coquettes, unending their mating ritual
For minutes upon minutes upon minutes,
Somehow knowing it needs to last
In order to mean something lifelong.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
She Is Who Wakes Me
She Is Who Wakes Me
A Poem inspired by Jane Hirshfield's "Imagine Myself In Time"
Twenty years on, facing old age
who will my young self be?
What will she look like when I look back
from future mornings? The quality
of those mornings, a hidden mystery—no telling now
whether I'll find birdsongs, or birds.
Looking at old age, when it's closer at hand,
will I remember the way words matter now:
guardians of my heart, gates to others'?
Maybe one loss will follow another,
and widowhood will be less sudden.
Or I will walk naked into a sunny morning, forgetting
how cold the world still is at dawn.
I wonder if my older self knows how
to enfold time, piling years
onto her current moment,
now to then, then to now.
Saying, "it is only ever now,"
so that neither of us can utter a reply.
She already knows about me. Time folds.
She is who wakes me, today.
I started writing this poem in June but has evolved quite a bit since, and it felt time to share it with more people. It feels like it tries to capture a sentiment (or series of sentiments) that are close at hand for me this summer. If you read it and have any associations with it, or want to provide other feedback, please do!
A Poem inspired by Jane Hirshfield's "Imagine Myself In Time"
Twenty years on, facing old age
who will my young self be?
What will she look like when I look back
from future mornings? The quality
of those mornings, a hidden mystery—no telling now
whether I'll find birdsongs, or birds.
Looking at old age, when it's closer at hand,
will I remember the way words matter now:
guardians of my heart, gates to others'?
Maybe one loss will follow another,
and widowhood will be less sudden.
Or I will walk naked into a sunny morning, forgetting
how cold the world still is at dawn.
I wonder if my older self knows how
to enfold time, piling years
onto her current moment,
now to then, then to now.
Saying, "it is only ever now,"
so that neither of us can utter a reply.
She already knows about me. Time folds.
She is who wakes me, today.
I started writing this poem in June but has evolved quite a bit since, and it felt time to share it with more people. It feels like it tries to capture a sentiment (or series of sentiments) that are close at hand for me this summer. If you read it and have any associations with it, or want to provide other feedback, please do!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Laughter, After
Laughter, After
(On "Faith Healing")
One can hear the phrase "Faith Healing" as the healing of wounded faith (as in: faith, healing). Or as the way faith, like nothing else, heals. I guess that it does. This way: I sit on a porch and I stare at the ocean, believing that this is time well spent. I understand our whole lives together hover above a small area of the Pacific and I stare. I listen to the family of quail looking for food on our porches, and it is literally a family: mother, father, and a very spotted baby. I am giving myself time, on a Sunday, a day you left, and have none left of. I trust that this is what I need and I listen to the quail, and I hear you say, about the baby: That. Is. So. Cute. And I am grateful for your voice in my ears. So my faith gives me gratitude which leads me to tears of what can only be called joy. So it has happened again: faith led to time led to gratitude led to tears led to joy. I am not past-tense healed, but I am healing. You are healing. Me. Despite the paradox. I bless you for being the wound and the salve simultaneously. Render and mender. Woe-er and Sew-er/Sower. Tearful and cheerful. Latitude/gratitude. Attitude/platitude. Food chewed. Mood-lewd. Quail-wail. Laughter, After. You are cracking me up, and I am back to real joy, and if I weren't writing these words in a roomful of people there'd be real tears, too.
(On "Faith Healing")
One can hear the phrase "Faith Healing" as the healing of wounded faith (as in: faith, healing). Or as the way faith, like nothing else, heals. I guess that it does. This way: I sit on a porch and I stare at the ocean, believing that this is time well spent. I understand our whole lives together hover above a small area of the Pacific and I stare. I listen to the family of quail looking for food on our porches, and it is literally a family: mother, father, and a very spotted baby. I am giving myself time, on a Sunday, a day you left, and have none left of. I trust that this is what I need and I listen to the quail, and I hear you say, about the baby: That. Is. So. Cute. And I am grateful for your voice in my ears. So my faith gives me gratitude which leads me to tears of what can only be called joy. So it has happened again: faith led to time led to gratitude led to tears led to joy. I am not past-tense healed, but I am healing. You are healing. Me. Despite the paradox. I bless you for being the wound and the salve simultaneously. Render and mender. Woe-er and Sew-er/Sower. Tearful and cheerful. Latitude/gratitude. Attitude/platitude. Food chewed. Mood-lewd. Quail-wail. Laughter, After. You are cracking me up, and I am back to real joy, and if I weren't writing these words in a roomful of people there'd be real tears, too.
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